Remember the Reasons
by MinaRobins
Summary: In the aftermaths of the battle we have to pick up what we have remaining and build it into something that has waited patiently for so very long. Fluffy but Serious Sterek.


**Title**: Remember the Reasons

**Author**: MinaRobins

**Fandom**: Teen Wolf

**Pairing**: Sterek. Stiles/Derek

**Rating**: G

**Summary**: In the aftermaths of the battle we have to pick up what we have remaining and build it into something that has waited patiently for so very long. Fluffy but Serious.

…

Derek bends his tall frame, forehead scrunched up in vigilant attentiveness. There could be lingering damage that mere vision and even magic cannot show. His hands sit lightly on Stile's willowy shoulders. In this moment alone, at least when they are together, the permanent sneer has gone missing from Derek's lips. He can draw no pain from Stiles, only fatigue seeps into where he touches but that soon lessens into the fade.

His voice rumbles deep, the vocal chords abraded by the countless nights of ferocious battle. Derek notes his observations to the quiet room, how there seems to be no immediate threat to Stiles being. The timber of his words makes Stiles liken it to velvet; it prompts the thought of a living room aglow with a fireplace's warmth, to security and haven. Stiles blushes as he realizes that Derek has always managed to also be a temptingly decadent indulgence.

Derek's touch continues even as he ceases his Werewolf ability to drain suffering, "Is this alright?"

Stiles tilts his head, most of his blood has rushed to somewhere else but what remained still managed to turn his pale complexion into a beacon of red. In the room he grew up in to the place where bits of his conspiracies still lay. The tangles of thread clutter the wooden floor boards. This room of his, the childhood memories and the horrors of his life now mingle and taunt him. Stiles is conflicted and embarrassingly but unrepentantly horny; he should be dead weight after the nogitsune vacated his body. He isn't though, he can't be. Derek is heat, they are together and the anticipation makes Stiles tremble.

He had been prepared to leave, so ready to let it end, to close his eyes a final time, to stop being a bystander to carnage he was too weak to stop. Derek makes him need to stay. His friends are his anchors, especially Scott, that brother of his was a conundrum. They fueled one another, they shattered one another. Scott had smirked his crooked smile knowingly when Derek asked for a moment alone with Stiles. Through everything that has happened, there was still something that remained credulous and sweet in the boy alpha.

After the ritual there's also something tainted that lingers in all of three them. The corruption had festered and excoriated their sanity, it attempted to take Stiles. It had pillaged Allison's life.

Allison would want him to be in the now, to have this happiness, to live. That was what they all fight for.

Stiles wants to stay in this moment, remember forever how Derek is like being this gentle and them this close, "yeah, it's good."

"And this?" The hands slip lower, over the fragile strength hidden in the sinews of the human.

Stile nods, his mouth dried and his heart beating a loud proclamation of his excitement to the taller male. The simple caress slid down biceps and bare skin, the abnormally high heat that flowed from the palms and the resolute care made Stiles _want. _

Derek is staring with that familiar intensity, a piercing molten gaze, like this would be the last time they'll ever see one another. Who knew, perhaps it was. Perhaps someone from their past or a new entity in their approaching future would steal them from one another.

These heavy thoughts should not weigh on this moment of precious reprieve. Stiles distances himself from the dreadfulness. There are chasms left behind by the ritual of soul sacrification, a hostile and famished emptiness that pulses in the space that was not quite himself. He works for something carefree, searches for that wit that has kept him sane.

"Duh... welcome to the gun show." Stile flexes his arms and blushes horribly when Derek snorts and chortles at his human endeavour at a display of physique.

That's good right? Comedy was sexy right? It had to be, because nothing sounds quite like Derek's genuine pleasure. With everything that Derek had suffered through? From the injustice that has soured his mild nature; to the betrayals and rising body count of his pack.

In a town where death and chaos bred and the supernatural brewed to mutilate life. Derek's pleasure was all Stiles needed and the taste of that humor on the Werewolf's mouth made it all the more worth cherishing.

This was what he had fought for. This simple living need for the soul before him, these feelings will make them weak, susceptible to exploitation; though they'll also drive them on when strength fails breakable forms.

Their friends may leave by their will or not but they'll keep on trying to protect because they've been given that unlucky gift to fight against it all. So when it feels like they'll drown from the endless pressure from the costs too heavy a price. Stiles will think back to the feel of the lips against his; to the sure calloused hand on his body and to the smell of Derek in the organized chaos of his room. To that cautious light that sparks in Derek's hazel green eyes. He doesn't tell his love with words but with actions and with a hold that is both desperate and fulfilling.

He was the reason why.

Stiles strains to preserve as many of those moments as he can. Time makes what he can recall blurry and the senses of the once vibrantly remembered environment dampened and mute. Nothing is as solid as they were when the times allow them the leisure of being together.

Though he has to try, has to know how to continue and breathe when blood leeches into his jeans and Derek's ridged body is too heavy for him to lift.


End file.
